Bad News Burial Time - *updated*

Britain is to reinforce its military presence in Iraq in a move that reflects increasing concern about the threat to its troops and the inability of local forces to take over responsibility for the country's security.

The decision was announced by the Ministry of Defence as the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, on her first visit to Iraq, warned that it was making "very slow" progress on security. Separately, a leading international thinktank warned that the conflict in Iraq was producing highly trained and motivated jihadists ready to commit terrorist acts in Europe and elsewhere.

Ruth Kelly has reneged on a promise of widespread consultation on the politically sensitive issue of how the government should spend billions of pounds on new social housing for the poorest people in the country.

In June, the communities secretary promised a chance for everybody from council tenants to landlords to give their views on plans to make social housing a priority in Gordon Brown's spending review next year.

... With just under a fortnight to go before consultation finishes, Peter Wycherley, a senior civil servant at the department for communities and local government, admitted that only three discussion meetings were being held - in Newcastle, Cambridge and Bolton. The Bolton meeting will be held a week after the consultation period is over. He told Alan Walters, chair of Defend Council Housing, in an e-mail: "I am not aware that other Government Offices intend to hold events specifically on the discussion paper."

Suspicion that the government is biased against council tenants has been fuelled by a decision by Go East, the regional office organising the Cambridge meeting, to prevent an elected tenant representative on Cambridge's housing management board from attending the consultation.

A spokesman said: " The consultation has been widely advertised on the ministry's website and any tenant could write in with their views".

In fact the department's website does not list the proposals under their current consultation exercises seeking the views of the general public. It lists the proposals as a discussion document aimed at a more specialist audience.

The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says some observers believe the deal offers the government an exit from a military strategy that has largely failed.

Dozens of soldiers have been killed in North Waziristan over the past year and local support for the Taleban seems to have increased rather than decreased, she says.